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Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti’s interview with Iran media provides insights into how some Palestinians today view the war unfolding in Gaza and Iran’s role.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN NOVEMBER 10, 2024 14:22
Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Hamas take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023.
(photo credit: REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA)
A recent interview between a Palestinian political leader and Iran’s Tasnim News reveals how the October 7 attack has changed the calculations of Palestinian politicians in the West Bank. It also reveals the larger support that Iran and its proxies have among Palestinians, at least on the surface.
Tasnim headlined the interview “Barghouti: Iran’s missile shows Israel’s legend is a lie.” The goal of the interview was to showcase how the Palestinians today embrace the “resistance” and Iran’s role. While this is the Iranian agenda, Barghouti appeared to embrace it wholeheartedly.
The interview and its perspective have implications for the future in the West Bank as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging and his era may come to an end in the coming years. This dovetails with the incoming Trump administration’s four years in office, and it is worth paying attention to.
Mustafa Barghouti is the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative. In the past, he was seen as a Palestinian politician committed to non-violence, and he ran for president of the Palestinian Authority against Mahmoud Abbas in 2005. He received twenty percent of the votes at the time. Born in 1954, he is a physician and activist.
Barghouti is very knowledgeable and follows world events closely. He also receives many guests. In an interview with The Intercept in February 2024, he said, “We are in good touch with the many leaders in the region, and Arab leaders as well as European leaders, many of them come and visit us. Most recently, I had meetings with the prime minister of Holland, the foreign minister of Holland, the deputy prime minister of Luxembourg, and many others. And we are in touch with most European countries.”
Supporting a single-state
While he once appeared to support two states as a solution to the conflict, he now has embraced one state. This is in line with some Western pro-Palestinian voices who have also moved from two-state concepts to one-state.
“Spain, Ireland, and Norway recognize Palestine, but also our right to self-determination, whether in two states or one. Some tell me that Israelis will never accept one democratic state. And my response is that they don’t accept the two-state solution either,” Barghouti told El Pais earlier this year.
Now, let’s look at what he told Iranian media. Usually, when these pro-peace types speak to Western media, they talk about non-violence, but when they speak to those they think are “one of their own,” then they openly embrace violence. With the Iranian media, he praised the Iranian missile attacks on Israel.
Asked about Israel’s decision to go to war with Hezbollah, he said that “Hezbollah and the beloved and brotherly Lebanese nation decided to support the people of Gaza and the Palestinian national struggle and go to war with Israel.” Then he said that Israel seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza…it also plans to occupy large parts of Lebanon. The (Zionist) enemy wants to occupy Syria as well…Israel is greedy to annex more areas to its territory and may even intend to annex parts of Jordan or all of Jordan.”
Barghouti argues that Israel’s goal is to “destroy every other power in the region. Israel is also hostile to Iran.” He references an article he read in the 1980s from the Washington Institute, which discussed the "dual containment of Iran and Iraq.” He argues that Israel got the US to weaken Iraq and now “wants to defeat the only remaining military force that has stood up against them and is a regional power, and its name is Iran.”
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Asked about the killing of Nasrallah and also Hamas leaders, the Palestinian politician responded, “Israelis do not understand the mentality and thinking of Arab, Islamic and Palestinian countries. They do not understand that the greatest wish of this leader (Sayed Hassan Nasrallah) was to be martyred. Of course, they fought with all their strength throughout their lives, but they were not afraid of martyrdom.”
Response to October 7
In response to a question about the October 7 attack, the Palestinian politician says that its results will be evaluated for many years. “Perhaps the most important achievement of this battle was that it defeated the Zionist project to solve the Palestinian issue by normalizing relations with Arab countries.”
He also argues that the attack “caused the Palestinian issue to be in the focus of Arab and international countries once again. After Netanyahu's efforts to marginalize the Palestinian issue; This issue was again in the focus of the most important political events in the world.”
What he is saying is that it is ok to massacre 1,000 people and kidnap 250 in order to make the Palestinian cause the center of attention, even if that attention is negative. This argument is likely common across the political spectrum of Palestinian politics. They don’t see the Bibas children being kidnapped as a crime, or parading the body of Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza as a crime, it is seen as a success.
The more bloody the attack, the more attention, the more success. Peace supporters don’t usually argue in favor of more massacres, but this is the stance of a politician who is praised for “non-violence.” In this case, “non-violence” means supporting others by using violence.
Barghouti also embraces the Houthis “confronting” Israel, “which is the main factor and condition for victory, and the other is imposing sanctions and cutting off relations with Israel.” The politician argues that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will stop fighting only when the costs of this war exceed his gains. This is happening now.” He pays attention to Israel’s economy and argues it is suffering from war. “Israel is facing an economic collapse, heavy loss of life and money that cannot be compensated. Sanctions and cutting off international relations will also be an effective fact.”
Most important for our understanding of the West Bank, Barghouti looks at what is happening locally. “The West Bank has completely different characteristics from Gaza. For this reason, the resistance in the bank has acquired other forms of experience, but the principle of resistance is also there. In my opinion, resistance is not only through armed actions. The truth is that the entire life of Palestinians in the West Bank is resistance. We are witnessing armed resistance, popular resistance, resistance in the education and medical sector, resistance through holding prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque and challenging the occupying regime.”
He praises Sinwar for how the Hamas leader appeared in death. “Sinwar…first proved the falsehood of Israel's lies. They claim that he hid in the tunnels and sent other people's children to the battlefront. He himself fought and was martyred while fighting. They said that he was hiding behind civilians, but he was martyred during the war and not a single civilian was with him.”
Once again, this illustrates how other Palestinian factions, even those viewed as peaceful by the international community, see Sinwar as a hero. This has major ramifications for what comes next in the West Bank in any post-Abbas era.
The Palestinian politician notes that his movement has embraced discussions about a Palestinian unity government. He says his movement “participated in these meetings first in Moscow and then in Beijing. We thank the efforts of Russia and China. The Chinese made a lot of effort to reach the conclusion of these negotiations. The meetings were positive and we reached agreements.”
He says the agreements “stipulate the immediate formation of the national unity government; in order to prevent and prevent the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, to defeat Netanyahu's efforts to create a puppet group to manage Gaza under the supervision of the occupiers, and to prevent and prevent Netanyahu's plan to continue occupying the Gaza Strip, the immediate formation of a government of national unity is a very important step.”
Barghouti’s interview is important because it reveals some of the thinking among Palestinian factions in the West Bank. Today, parts of Fatah are likely more open to a Hamas-led government in the West Bank, especially one where the Hamas leadership is kept in the background, and the government has a veneer of being a technocratic government. It also appears that PNI, PFLP and, DFLP and other factions would accept a government that is either influenced or led by Hamas today.
Barghouti argued in his interview that the Iranian missile attack was important. He noted that the US sent the THAAD air defense system to Israel. “This shows that the myth of Israel is a lie. What some colonial [Western]countries thought that Israel was protecting their interests, today has turned into a burdensome.”
He argues that Israel’s current war with Hamas will fail “first, because of the resistance of the Palestinian people; Second, because of the resistance of the Arab nations and thirdly because of Iran's endurance. Also, because of the growing strength of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people,” It is important to note the way Iran has now grown in influence among Palestinians in the perception that it is able to defeat Israel. Even if this perception is incorrect, it is worth noting.
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